Conroy Backs Down.

THE Rudd Government has indicated that it may back away from its mandatory internet filtering plan.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy today told a Senate estimates committee that the filtering scheme could be implemented by a voluntary industry code.

Senator Conroy’s statement is a departure from the internet filtering policy Labor took into the October 2007 election to make it mandatory for ISPs to block offensive and illegal content.

Responding to questions from shadow communications minister Nick Minchin on how the government may go about imposing the internet filtering scheme, Senator Conroy said that legislation may not be required and ISPs may adopt an industry consensus to block restricted content on a voluntary basis.

“One option is potentially legislation. One other option is that it could be (on a) voluntary basis that they (ISPs) could voluntarily agree to introduce it.”

In response Senator Minchin said he had never heard of a voluntary mandatory system.

Senator Conroy responded with “well they could agree to all introduce it”.

It’s becoming more and more obvious that this is unpopular legislation and it seems the government has been in damage control ever since. This has barely hit the news for over 2 months and the next part we hear about is Conroy saying that all ISPs could voluntarily implement the filter, something which I find incredibly naive.

With the proposal in such a shambles, with them admitting that they’d need to write laws to get it implemented, one has to wonder why are they continuing with something like this? Whilst I’m sure this is a move done to keep Rudd at bay it would seem that Conroy is caught up the old dollar auction game. With such an investment in pushing this considerably unfavourable policy he can’t be seen to be backing down now and be forever seen as being weak on unpopular but “just” causes. So now he’s reduced to this vocal gymnastics to describe what really would be a voluntary mandatory system.

Whilst the policy isn’t completely gone, what with the joke of the trial still continuing, even if it gets implemented it will be horribly ineffective and will prove a talking point for the next election. I’m actually quite surprised how little attention this policy has received in the media considering that it would be a great point of ridicule for the opposition to bring against the Rudd government. They missed the boat when it came to slugging them on the budget but this has been an ongoing joke for over 6 months now. Maybe the opposition thinks no one cares.

That’s probably the most scary part about policy like this. When it first came out I was fine with the idea, allowing someone like me to continue to use the Internet as I wished and anyone who wanted filtering at the ISP level could get it. However when it began to change into something much more hideous I realised I couldn’t stand idly by, but I can’t say that much of the public at large. Talking to my family and relatives I found that most of them were in favour of such horrible ideas, mostly because they had no idea about what it actually meant for them. This kind of ignorance is what scares me as it allows things like this to slip under the radar, slowly eating away at our civil liberties.

This was also why I began to take an interest in politics. Staying ignorant of what my government in power was doing on helped them to pass legislation I disagreed with. Keeping myself informed about what they were doing enabled me to make sound voting choices when it came time, and I’m (mostly) thankful for it. Sure I voted in the party that brought this policy on us but that’s exactly what my previous post on micro democracy was all about. Had I had the option to vote out “Internet Filter” I would have, but we’re still in an age where democracy (and society) isn’t granular enough to handle people like me who would love to micro manage their government.

One day I’ll hear the death knell of this policy, one day.

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A very welcome development. Though we should always be cautious about interpreting committee statements as formal policy shifts, but clearly it shows the government is rattled and thinking of making changes to its policy.